Thoughts on Victims of Sin/Víctimas del pecado

    On Criterion, I watched the 1951 Mexican musical melodrama/crime film Victims of Sin, or Víctimas del pecado, directed by Emilio Fernández, co-written by Fernández and Mauricio Magdaleno, and starring the Cuban-Mexican icon Ninón Sevilla as Violeta, a popular dancer at a nightclub in Mexico City run by the ruthless and maniacal gangster Rodolfo (Rodolfo Acosta). At the club, Rodolfo refuses to acknowledge paternity of a baby boy by one of the dancers, Rosa (Margarita Ceballos), and forces Rosa to choose him over the baby, pressuring her to put the baby in a trash can. Violeta rescues the baby, and, with the help of neighborhood women and her own fight to survive as she goes from dancing in the club to doing sex work on the street, that she has tenacity and toughness and won't let anyone hurt the baby or break her spirit.

    When Violeta dances at the club, Sevilla is riveting to watch, dancing with a mix of sensuality and athleticism and a lust for life. She knows she is in a patriarchal society that she has to literally fight against, standing up to brute men who demand that women know their place, and takes a huge risk in taking care of the baby, earlier stating that they as poor dancers "don't have the right to have children." Her dancing is stunning to watch, with way more abandon than in a usual Hollywood musical, and the climatic dance is when she finds her way to the nightclub La Maquina Loca, doing an impromptu audition to prove her dancing skills to get out of sex work, and she performs as a rumbera to Cuban music, and she reaches an emotional peak of her character truly having her happy joie de vivre as a dancer, finding power within herself, and doing a fun call-and-response dance with a drummer who joins in on the dance floor. It's a truly spectacular scene to behold.

    The film is a fantastic mix of musical moments, including songs with sexual innuendo sung in a flirty manner, soap opera melodrama, and film noir, with gorgeous black and white cinematography by Gabriel Figueroa, considered one of the greatest cinematographers in Mexican cinema. There is an excellent scene where, when Rodolfo is slapping and hurting Violeta, a whole lineup of fellow sex workers swarm in to protect her by pulling Rodolfo off of her and beating on him, it's glorious to watch.

 I had heard of the film through the YouTube channel Be Kind Rewind, highlighting Sevilla's performances in her annual Twelve Days of Actress video to celebrate female actors' performances in films across genres and cultures, and I'm really happy I took her recommendation to watch this film.

Thoughts on Nightbitch

    On Hulu, I watched the 2024 black comedy written and directed by Marielle Heller (The Diary of a Teenage Girl; Can You Ever Forgive Me?; A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood), based on the 2021 novel by Rachel Yoder. The film stars Amy Adams as a former artist and current stay-at-home mother simply known as "Mother," who is struggling with feeling stifled at home taking care of her toddler son while her husband is busy at work, essentially making her feel like a single parent. 

    She keeps a polite smile when talking to others, while having fantasies about wanting to vent about her frustrations at putting her career on hold for motherhood and feeling like she is losing her sense of self. She goes to a library event for mothers and toddlers, for the kids to listen to a children's music performer play, and is initially resistant when the other moms are trying to bond with her, wanting to have normal conversations with other adults outside of being stay-at-home moms.

    Her husband (Scoot McNairy), just known as Husband (the child is known as Son or Baby) is glaringly oblivious to her struggles, thinking she's having fun being at home and playing with the baby all day, not realizing the toll it's taking on her to be alone with their child all day, with his dependence on her. The child refuses to sleep by himself, and will keep her up when she is trying to read him to bed, and she blames herself for not following a sleep cycle idea for him when he was a baby, thinking she screwed him up.

    The story takes a magical realism turn where Mother finds strange new developments on her body, like a patch of white fur on her back, pulling out a tail through a pustule boil on her lower back, and growing two rows of eight nipples on her torso. And that local dogs are attracted to her, coming up to her in the park and at her front door. She realizes that she is turning into a dog, and at night, she transforms into a dog, racing around her neighborhood, and feeling more free as a dog. As a person, she has heightened senses, bonds with her son more by pretending he is her puppy, and feeling a renewed sense of life with her dog spirit. 

    She learns more by going to the library and checking out books recommended by the librarian (Jessica Harper of Suspiria and Shock Treatment fame), researching cultural myths and of animal spirits and transformations in women to understand the change in her. Harper as the librarian has this mystery to her that makes her feel more understanding of Mother's position in life, and she brings this quiet and eccentric grace to her role.

    The film is interesting when tackling how a woman could feel isolated and lonely as a stay-at-home mom, especially with husbands who only want the fun parts of parenting and don't know the day-to-day routines of childcare. And it has a lot of great needle drops that is influenced by Heller being a Gen-X director, like Weird Al's "Dare to be Stupid," songs by the Cocteau Twins and Joanna Newsom. 

    I wasn't as interested when the film would try to make it more about female empowerment in a way that felt cliched, or how her resolution with her marital issues felt too pat and like her husband still wasn't going to be emotionally there for her. I liked it more leaning into the dark satire and weirdness, not trying to have a wrapped-up happy ending that felt too "nice" for me. And as this film's plot reminded me a lot of Marianna Palka's 2017 film Bitch, where a similarly-frustrated SAHM starts acting like a dog as a nervous breakdown reaction, I felt Rachel Yoder may have taken some inspiration from that and made the protagonist turn into a literal dog. 

    It's a decent movie at just over 90 minutes, that likely could have gone weirder and darker (though I was annoyed at a scene of implied animal abuse, though nothing was shown graphically), but it's always great to see Amy Adams onscreen, and I liked that Heller took on this film as a comment about motherhood and artistic expression and feminism.

Thoughts on Nosferatu (2024)

 Yesterday I went to see Robert Eggers’ remake of Nosferatu with my friend Chris at the Alamo Drafthouse in Lower Manhattan, and really liked it a lot. It’s moody, atmospheric Victorian Gothic horror, with the psychosexual stuff is more text than subtext, and while I was mixed on Lily-Rose Depp’s performance, picturing Olivia Cooke in her place for a better actor, I still liked how the film was about her childhood trauma being haunted by the vampire, both being repulsed by it while not wanting to admit that a small part of her craves his demon touch. It’s more interesting to play it that way, and I liked how the film could get macabre with squishy gore effects (anyone who saw Robert Eggers’ other films can know what to expect with use of animals as harbingers of doom), while being darkly funny with Willem Dafoe’s occultist character Prof. Albin Eberhart Von Franz, based on Abraham van Helsing.

    I had seen the silent film as a teen, and would make comparisons with Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the Coppola film version from 1992, like with the Renfield character (renamed Herr Knock, portrayed by Simon McBurney) or Thomas and Ellen as the Jonathan and Mina Harker characters.

    I just saw the film, so it hasn’t marinated in my brain for too long to make a better review, but I did like it as a spooky and layered film, and it was fun seeing Chris and catching up as fellow film nerds.

Thoughts on Requiem

    On YouTube, I watched an upload of a 2006 German film titled Requiem, directed by Hans-Christian Schmid, and starring Sandra Hüller in her feature film debut in a film based on the life of Annaliese Michel, German woman who was allegedly possessed by six or more demons and died in 1976 of malnutrition, abused by her family and priests through forced exorcisms.

    The film centers on Michaela (Hüller) a 21-year old woman in 1970s Germany who wants to study pedagogy in college to become a teacher, but her deeply Catholic mother is against it because Michaela lost a year of schooling due to a health issue. She goes to college anyway, makes a best friend with a finger classmate and has her first boyfriend, but is struggling with mental health issues, and secretly has epilepsy, but doesn’t want her parents to find out. She is caught between confusions with her religious faith, hearing voices in her head, and thinking she is possessed by demons, in part by a young priest planting the idea in her head.

    I like how the film doesn’t play like a thriller or a horror film, but feels more like a quiet character study, and Hüller feels so natural in the part, being 28 at the time but able to play a younger, vulnerable woman caught in between her mother’s possessiveness and her need to be an independent adult. I heard of the film through Be Kind Rewind’s recommendations of notable actress performances, and really liked this film for its documentary-style filmmaking and her performance.

Thoughts on Hale County This Morning, This Evening

    I watched RaMell Ross' 2018 documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening, and really liked it. It was Oscar nominated, and it is centered on Black families in Hale County, Alabama. Ross had moved to Alabama in 2009 to coach high school basketball and teach in a youth program, and was already trained as a photographer and filmmaker, and he made a really interesting documentary with no narration, no music soundtrack, with natural interviews that don’t feel like sit-down confessionals, and brief intertitles between scenes. It’s a very intimate and personal film, very much of the time, as a teen boy named his baby son Kyrie, likely after the NBA player Kyrie Irving.

    I had just seen a Criterion Closet video with Ross, as he directed the new film Nickel Boys, adapted from Colson Whitehead’s novel, and hasn’t heard of him before. This came up on my weekly newsletter from Le Cinéma Club, which uploads one movie at a time weekly, usually short films. This is 76 minutes long, and can be seen until Friday at https://www.lecinemaclub.com/.../hale-county-this.../

Thoughts on Dream for an Insomniac

     On Tubi, I watched the 1996 indie romantic comedy Dream for an Insomniac, written and directed by novelist, filmmaker, and founder of indie record label Bright Antenna Tiffanie DeBartolo. The film starred Ione Skye, Mackenzie Astin, and Jennifer Aniston, and is largely set in a family-run coffee shop in San Francisco, called Cafe Blue Eyes, run by Leo (Seymour Cassel), named in honor of his friendship with Frank Sinatra. The film centers on Frankie (Skye), an aspiring actress who lives above the coffeeshop and is close with her cousin Rob (Michael Landes), and they both work at the coffeeshop. Frankie has struggled with insomnia ever since her parents' death in a car accident during her childhood. She sees the world in black and white, as does the audience. until she meets the new barista at her job, David (Astin), and her world switches to vivid color (a la The Wizard of Oz) as they begin a romance and recite poetry to each other.

    Rob is gay, and isn't ready to come out to his father yet, so he has his friend Allison (Aniston), also an actress, pretend to be his girlfriend, and she plays around with French, American Southern, and Irish accents as practice for acting. This came out at the height of Aniston's fame with Friends, and the beginning of her run in romantic comedies, appearing in She's the One the same year, and she would be in other 90s romantic comedies like Picture Perfect and The Object of my Affection. She's fun and breezy in this movie, and her star power makes it feel like she shouldn't just be the best friend in this film, like she was already too famous for that by the time this film came out.

    The film is a snapshot of the mid-90's indie scene in romantic comedies, with young city people hanging out in coffeeshops, gay friend characters but not the main leads yet, jazzy score, and alternative and indie rock songs, like the eels' "Novocaine for the Soul" opening the film.

    Mackenzie Astin is alright in the film, but I felt like he was overshadowed by the other stars, and I kept picturing James LeGros in his role, as he has had more charisma and more of a history in independent films of the 1980s and 1990s.

    Ione Skye is fun and quirky and cute to watch in the movie, coming off more like a relatable city friend who is stylish and hip and pretty, and it is a difference seeing her starring in this romantic comedy to being in best friend roles later in her career in the 2004 remake of Fever Pitch as Drew Barrymore's friend.

    It's a nice movie, not too memorable beyond the title, sort of trying to be artsy but still staying pretty conventional to the times.

Thoughts on A Real Pain

   At the Angelika Film Center in New York City, I went to see A Real Pain, a 2024 film written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg. It stars Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin as cousins David and Benji, who take a trip to Poland to both go on a Holocaust group tour, as well as to visit the childhood home of their recently deceased grandmother, who was a Holocaust survivor. The cousins grew up together like brothers, but have drifted apart in recent years, not having spoken for six months. David works in digital marketing and lives in Manhattan with his wife and toddler son, and is reserved and pragmatic, while Benji lives in Binghamton and is more eccentric and charismatic, but without a career direction in his life. 

    The tour is led by James (Will Sharpe), a British polite and genteel man who largely sticks to the script when delivering monologues about the tour sites. The group includes a middle-aged couple named Mark and Diane (Daniel Oreskes and Liza Sadovy), Marcia (Jennifer Grey), a recently divorced woman who is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, and Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan), a survivor of the Rwandan genocide in the 1990s and a converted Jew. The group get to know each other at dinners and train rides, visiting the sites, while Benji is thinking more about sneaking away to smoke weed on hotel rooftops, agitating David with his spontaneity (like neglecting to wake him when they are on the train, intentionally missing their stop), and giving constructive feedback to the tour guide to not give so much information overload when they are visiting the Old Jewish Cemetery and trying to read the gravestones.

    The cousins contrast with each other a lot, and David does confess to Benji that he wishes he could be more charismatic like him, lighting up a room, but also resents how erratic he is and how he can blow up a room just as easily. Culkin portrays this nervous energy as Benji that is more of a cover for his own anxieties, especially missing his grandmother and how she would snap back at him when she felt he was self-destructing with substance abuse and a lack of direction. He's really great in this film, and I wanted to learn more about his character, especially as more about his mental health struggles gets revealed, and I felt like Eisenberg was pulling his punches as a director, not digging deep enough, and leaving the finale more open-ended with Benji's story.

    The film is a tight 90 minutes, and it balances comedy and drama well, especially in a sequence where the group visits the Madjanek concentration camp, and Eisenberg lets the scene be largely silent with sparse commentary from James as the guide, and it is this still moment in the film that lets the action take a break, and lets the audience sit with the characters in their sadness and grief upon visiting the gas chambers.

    The film was co-produced by Emma Stone and her husband Dave McCrary, and it's an interesting movie that feels more like a road trip/buddy movie, a good mix of grief and comedy, and I recommend it as an interesting watch.

Thoughts on Stone Pillow

    On Tubi, I watched the 1985 TV movie Stone Pillow, directed by George Schaefer, written by Rose Leiman Goldemberg, and starring Lucille Ball as an unhoused woman named Florabelle, living on the streets of New York City for an unspecified amount of years, pushing her cart around full of her prized possessions. Daphne Zuniga played Carrie, a young social worker who just started her job in a shelter, and wants to know firsthand what life is like for homeless people. She meets Flora by chance, and Flora is stingy and doesn't want pity or any help from anyone. She thinks Carrie is a runaway, and Carrie doesn't correct her, essentially lying by omission. 

    Flora takes her under her wing, showing her around the streets, instructing her on how to eat fruits and vegetables out of the garbage, avoiding the cops when looking for a public place to sleep at night, and navigating the bureaucracy of shelters. She warns Carrie that her pretty looks will make her a target for predators, and instructs her to cover her hair up with a knit cap to hide her beauty so she wouldn't be taken advantage of. 

    The film's story goes through a whole 24 hours of Flora and Carrie moving from the streets to Port Authority to Grand Central Station, including finding a hidden underground at Grand Central where a lot of homeless people hide out, and a young man named Max, who is an accountant who volunteers to help people, is suspicious of Carrie, telling her about the troubles the other people have gone through and saying to her "You look like you slept in a bed last night." He also tries to warn Flora that Carrie may not be who she seems, as Flora confides in her a lot and sees her as a young girl to protect, but Flora brushes him off.

   It was an interesting movie to watch, as Lucille Ball hadn't done much drama through her career, and this would be one of her last screen roles, aside from her 1986 show Life with Lucy, before she passed away in 1989. She is charismatic to watch, even not feeling totally convincing in the role because of her Hollywood celebrity preceding her, but it's still a good performance. When she tells Carrie about her past and how she became homeless, some of the story felt like it had some holes missing, but I could imagine that she may not be telling Carrie the whole truth and omitting some details to seem more sympathetic. 

    Daphne Zuniga was a rising star at the time, having been in The Sure Thing (1985) with John Cusack, and Modern Girls (1986) with Virginia Madsen, and would go on to greater fame with Spaceballs (1987) and her run on Melrose Place in the 1990s. She's fine in this, especially as a relative newcomer opposite a veteran star, and it's nice watching them act together onscreen and form a bond over one long day and night.

    The film has some notable actors in small roles, like Anna Maria Horsford (Friday, The Wayans Brothers) as a fellow social worker; Stephen Lang (Avatar; Last Exit to Brooklyn) in a bit role; Victor Raider-Wexler (The King of Queens) as a delivery man who sneaks fruit and vegetables to Flora; Raymond Serra (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) as a shop owner, and Mike Starr (Dumber & Dumber) as a man in the alley who warns the women about the threat of rapists.

    The movie makes good points when others who can see through Carrie's deceit that her trying to pretend to be homeless is insulting to actually homeless people, and twice they explain to her that they aren't different from her, and a few missed paychecks or a run of bad luck could put her in the same situation, as others she meets had lost their homes due to fires, missed welfare checks, medical issues, and being kicked out of rooming houses and not having an address to collect Social Security checks. As this film was made during the Reagan era, it's likely that many did become unhoused due to economic changes, a butterfly effect still being felt today, So even if the film is wrapped up with a happy ending that feels a little forced, it's still a decent movie about unhoused people with both an up and coming actress and a Hollywood veteran paired together.

Thoughts on You and Me

    On Criterion, I watched You and Me, a 1938 romantic comedy/crime drama directed by Fritz Lang, written by Virginia van Upp and Norman Krasna. It was an odd mix of genres, as part of it is a romantic comedy set in a department store where the owner has hired several ex-cons to work as salespeople, wanting to give them a chance at rehabilitation after prison, and how a robber named Joe (George Raft) falls for his coworker Helen (Sylvia Sidney). They end up getting into a quickie marriage, and while he was honest with her about his past, despite feeling like he didn't deserve a sweet innocent like her, she doesn't tell him that she too is an ex-con, and that she isn't allowed to marry while on parole, jeopardizing them both.

    The other part of the movie is a crime drama where Joe meets up with his old prison buddies, and they sit around reminiscing about their time in prison, like how they only had a good chicken meal once a year on Christmas, and while they can have chicken anytime as free men, it doesn't taste as good as when they had to wait for it. Then, because the film was directed by Lang and featured a score by Kurt Weill, goes into this Brechtian experimental musical number, with the men tapping metal instruments to create atonal sounds, chanting a cappella, coded knocking, and it's this genuinely strange but interesting moment in the film of the men singing about being in prison, then the film moves on from this musical moment and, aside from an opening song over cash registers about how everything costs money and consumerism and capitalism, doesn't do another musical number again.

    Sidney was very cute and charming to watch, and given that I had initially heard of her from her much later films in her senior years like Beetlejuice (1988) and Mars Attacks! (1996), it's fun to compare the adorable 1930s starlet she was with the tiny old woman with the smoker's voice she became later in life. George Raft was decent to watch, and he often starred in 1930s gangster films and had alleged real-life connections with gangsters, too.

    It is an interesting movie, and I liked the odd blend of genres and how it both felt like a typical Hollywood film in the Hayes Code era and an anticapitalistic critique from German experimental artists.

Thoughts on Thelma

  On Hulu, I watched the 2024 comedy Thelma, written and directed by Josh Margolin, starring June Squibb as the titular character, a woman in her nineties who gets scammed out of $10,000 by a caller pretending to be her grandson, and she goes on a mission to track down the scammers and get her money back.

    I really liked how the film is a mix of being a comedy about an elderly widow who borrows her friend Ben's (Richard Roundtree, in his final film role before his death in 2023) scooter, with her family panicking and trying to find her and driving around L.A., but mixing in serious issues about the realities of being old, the body hurting and breaking down, and needing to ask for help despite priding oneself on being independent. 

    Thelma doesn't like to be patronized or talked down to, and isn't going to let this money loss go, because she wants justice and her money back. She doesn't like that her grandson worries about her, wanting him to focus on his own life, and refusing to wear the medic alert bracelet that he had given her. When he tries to guide her in using a computer and talks down to her, she gives a sarcastic reply that seems to go over his head.

    Parker Posey and Clark Gregg are decent in supporting roles as Thelma's daughter Gail and son in-law Alan, and Fred Hechinger gives a nice performance as Thelma's grandson Danny, a young man who feels aimless in his life and empty after his recent breakup with his girlfriend.

    The finale with the scammers halfway plays out like a climax to an action film, but as it involves two elderly people with health issues, it doesn't go the way of a John Wick or Equalizer kind of gun battle finale. Rather, it's more like two people recognizing each other's desperation and mortality, but not having much sympathy for the other.

    The director Josh Margolin based the movie on his 103-yr old grandma Thelma, who was almost duped by scammers in a similar scheme. The film ends with a cute clip of the real-life Thelma, as sassy and as funny as the fictional version.

    June Squibb is fantastic in this film, and it's great seeing her in a film where she isn't just playing someone's funny grandma with one-liners, but is the lead character and shows a lot of heart and lived life and emotional resonance in the role of Thelma, and was really captivating to watch.

Thoughts on Fear City

 

   On Criterion, I watched Fear City, a 1984 exploitation film written by Nichols St. John and directed by Abel Ferrara. They have collaborated on nine films together, including Ms. 45, China Girl, King of New York, Dangerous Game, Body Snatchers, The Addiction, and The Funeral. The film centers on two talent agents for adult entertainment performers, the agents being Matt (Tom Berenger) and Nicky (Jack Scalia), who provide strippers for Manhattan night clubs, specifically the seedy Times Square area. A serial killer begins targeting the dancers, knifing them, and his attacks later turn fatal, and Matt and Nicky are being pressed by a police detective (Billy Dee Williams) to help him find the killer.

    Matt is a former boxer who accidentally killed his opponent, and he is connected with the mob over witnessing a mob hit as a child and not telling anyone about it. His ex-girlfriend Loretta (Melanie Griffith) is one of the star dancers, and as her friends get attacked and murdered, Matt rekindles his relationship with her and is trying to protect her from the same fate.

    

    The killer, Pazzo (John Foster) practices martial arts in the nude in his barren loft, writes about his attacks, and stalks the women late at night. Some of the dancers are played by notable actresses in early roles, like Maria Conchita Alonso, Rae Dawn Chong, and Ola Ray (best known as Michael Jackson's girlfriend in the Thriller video). The scenes of the killer doing martial arts while naked feels like inspiration for Die Hard 2, with the scenes of a naked William Sadler practicing karate or kickboxing while nude in his home. There are also similarities to the 1983 Charles Bronson movie 10 to Midnight, focusing on a serial killer who performs his murders in the nude as to not get any blood on him, and that movie also had Ola Ray in a small part as a friend of Bronson's character's daughter.

   

    Melanie Griffith had been acting since she was a teen in the 1970s, and in her early roles as an adult, she did get typecast in sex worker parts, with roles showing off her body, sex appeal, and soft voice. In the same year, she had been in Brian de Palma's Body Double as an adult film actor, and would become more of a mainstream star with roles in Something Wild (1986) and Working Girl (1988). She was a lot of fun in Cherry 2000 (1988), where she played a tracker of sex doll robots to help a guy find a model of his robot to replace, crossing a dangerous post-apocalyptic wasteland of 2017.

    This movie definitely feels like everything that Abel Ferrara likes about 1980s New York City: strippers, gangsters, cliched Italian New Yorker stereotypes, street violence, and an overwhelming feeling of sleaziness in the nighttime. It's nice to watch as long as one knows what to expect, of a 1980s B-movie neon thriller, with a cool theme song by David Johansen and Joe Delia.

Thoughts on The Linguini Incident

 On Criterion, I watched The Linguini Incident, a 1991 indie film directed by Richard Shepard (Cool Blue), an offbeat forgotten movie where Rosanna Arquette and David Bowie work at a trendy SoHo restaurant with a pretentious hipness, and she’s a waitress named Lucy whose grandfather worked with Harry Houdini as his agent, and she’s trying to become an escape artist, practicing with a noose, a straitjacket, and being locked in a sack. He’s a British undocumented immigrant named Monte, who is a pathological liar and has a quietly psychotic edge, looking for someone to quickly marry for a green card before he gets sent back. And they both are plotting to rob the trendy restaurant because it rakes in cash every night.

It’s weird to watch a movie where David Bowie is trying to play a regular person, albeit an attractive non-violent psycho. He’s still handsome and charming, but his rock star icon status makes it hard to see him as a struggling immigrant in NYC. I could believe him as a vampire in The Hunger or as Andy Warhol in Basquiat, but not as a guy who works as a bartender.

I like how quirky and sexy and funny Rosanna Arquette is, she’s really charming in this. I see this movie as like a sequel to her character in 1985’s Desperately Seeking Susan, after she as Roberta leaves her yuppie husband to live with boho Aidan Quinn in his barren loft and becomes a magician’s assistant in a downtown dive. I see her as Roberta having broken up with him, trying to become a magician of her own through the escape arts, and getting by on her waitress job while living with her roommate Vivian (Eszter Balint) in an old apartment. I much preferred the friend interactions of Lucy and Vivian, as they had a nice chemistry of downtown NYC girlfriends living together.

It’s an OK movie, more just interesting for the leads and depiction of early 90s downtown NYC in the indie movie boom.

Thoughts on The Substance

    At the Angelika Village East Theater in New York City, I went to see The Substance, a 2024 film written and directed by Coralie Fargeat (Revenge), starring Demi Moore as fading actress-turned fitness TV host Elisabeth Sparkle, who, decades after she won an Academy Award, is being pushed out of her fitness TV show by her sexist boss (Dennis Quaid), telling her she's 50 and aged out of being seen as attractive for a media audience. As she walks down a long red hallway, she passes by blown-up photos of her through the decades, done-up magazine style from the 1980s to the 2000s, and her huge and cavernous apartment is also adorned with a giant portrait of her younger self in fitness wear, a shrine to her Hollywood peak of beauty.

    She sees a billboard of herself being torn down, gets into a car accident, and a handsome young orderly passes her a flash drive labeled "The Substance" with the note "It changed my life." She plugs the flash drive in her computer, and an ominous male voice narrates a cell-replicating process (the film opens with a syringe being injected into an egg yolk, and the egg yolk reproducing an identical yolk out of its side, like in a mitosis kind of way), explaining how she and her other self will switch off every seven days, using a scientific process with a syringe kit and bags of liquid food for each body when not being in use, and the other self will be her younger, more conventionally attractive self, and that they are the same person even when split apart. 

    Elisabeth is at a desperate point in her life, so she orders it, and goes to a secret back alley location, where the gate won't open the whole way and she has to crouch under it, using a key card to get the package, and the process is painful, with her back splitting open violently and another person climbing out of her body. The other person is a younger, dark-haired beauty (Margaret Qualley), with the same consciousness as Elisabeth, who is now curled on her bathroom floor as a shell of herself, and the other woman, who names herself Sue, goes to audition for Elisabeth's old spot on the fitness show and immediately gets it because she radiates youth and sexiness and beauty, wearing 80s workout gear, and the show is re-tooled to be much more sexualized, with a lot of focus on her butt, doing suggestive positions, and the movie goes with this heightened reality, hardly anyone questioning where Sue came from, and her becoming an immediate TV star.

    But when they switch off, Elisabeth, having no job, and seemingly no hobbies or any friends and family, just spends her time alone at home, bingeing on food in front of the TV, trashing her apartment, and waiting to switch off so she can be young and dazzling. And the black market operation behind The Substance (which purposely stays vague on who runs it or where the substance comes from) gives strict rules in bold lettering about sticking to the seven-day rule, no exceptions, but, as Sue enjoys her popularity, she starts bending the rules and not wanting to switch off at the seven-day mark, thinking "Just one more day won't hurt." And Elisabeth starts resenting Sue for all the fun and celebrity she gets to enjoy, and even if they technically are the same person, and not conscious at the same time, they do start rivaling with each other to be the matrix, or the alpha, or the one in charge. And the ones who caused all of this are the sexist media and society who pushed Elisabeth out when she was deemed "old" and "unattractive," pushing her to extremes to regain her youth and vitality in a cartoonishly misogynist world.

    This movie is highly stylized, with a satirical sense of humor, with loud synths, big title cards for both Elisabeth and Sue, being overly flashy, and it's a lot of fun to watch. It's the most interesting role that Demi Moore has had in years, a comment on the sexist treatment she received from the media in the 1990s for seeming too intimidating, too sexual (especially with 1996's Striptease), and seen as too unlikable and "bitchy." Moore was essentially pushed out of her movie star career, though she produced the Austin Powers and Charlie's Angels movies, and appeared as the villain in Charlie's Angels 2: Full Throttle in 2003, seen as her "comeback" at the time. She was also mocked for her marriage to Ashton Kutcher because he was 15 years her junior, though bigger age differences with older men and younger women wouldn't be criticized as much. She continued acting in films, occasionally getting some critical acclaim (Margin Call), but this film does feel like full circle of her playing a movie star who is largely seen as past her prime. With the physical challenges of the film, especially as the movie gets more bizarre and over the top, she shows a lot of ferocity to throw herself into the weirder aspects of the film, and deserves all the acclaim she's gotten.

    Margaret Qualley, a dancer turned actor, who comes from a Hollywood family (her mother is model turned actress Andie MacDowell) has the talent of being both a charismatic dancer with captivating looks, and an interest in taking on offbeat movies like Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness, and Drive Away Dolls. She is fun to watch as someone who can play up being sexy and flirty with ease, but also excels with her frustration with Elisabeth sabotaging her life out of jealously, and she really shines in the finale as she takes things much further even when everything is falling apart.

    Fargeat's film really takes a lot of influence from weird, batshit horror films like Basket Case, The Fly, Society, as well as influenced by Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and John Frankenheimer's Seconds, and a lot of use of practical effects, which does give the film more of a visceral feel, especially as body parts decay or fall off, or the cell reproduction process out of Elisabeth's back, and heavy prosthetics as Elisabeth changes over the film. There have also been TV episodes of horror anthology shows like Tales from the Crypt and the 1980s version of The Twilight Zone where women go to extremes to fight aging and seeing their beauty fade, seeing youth and attractiveness as their worth and commodity in life, and with major side effects if they go too far or don't follow the set rules. And, as Fargeat is a French director, the film does share similarities with other French horror movies like Raw and In My Skin, and it does mix satirical feminist commentary on women only being valued for their youth and beauty with over the top horror comedy from B-movies. It's a really great movie, it won Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival, and is a standout of this year.

Thoughts on Anora

   At the Angelika Film Center in New York City, I went to see the 2024 film Anora, written and directed by Sean Baker (Tangerine, The Florida Project, Red Rocket), starring Mikey Madison (Better Things, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) as Anora, aka Ani, a Brooklyn stripper living in Brighton Beach near Coney Island who is romanced by a young and rich Russian playboy, Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn) , in the club and swept into a week-long binge of sex and drugs and partying and an impulsive Vegas quickie marriage. 

    When his wealthy oligarch family hears of it, it's up to his family's handler, Toros (Karren Karaguilan) and two henchmen to act as the middlemen to get the marriage annulled, but Ani, having been slut-shamed and insulted in Russian (a language she understands but doesn't speak fluently), refuses to be shut up, and her brassy personality proves a force that the family cannot easily buy off her silence, as she demands respect as her husband's wife and not just seen as a disposable sex worker.

    The film takes a screwball comedy approach, where a lot of scenes that could be played as serious drama (Ani being partially tied up by a guard to keep her from running away; Ivan taking off from his family's mansion and the group searching all over Brighton Beach for him at Russian-language spots) is played more as farce, with misunderstandings and fights, with a hilarious scene of Ani fighting the henchmen with biting one and kicking another and breaking his nose, smashing objects all over the living room. Toros later gives extra money to the housekeeping crew, letting them know that the house is messier than usual and not to ask questions.

    I liked how the film combined the goofy comedy with a somber realization on Ani's face as she is searching for Vanya, trying to call him, and being sent to voicemail, and as she keeps defending herself as his wife and proclaiming her love for him, as well as not wanting to be dismissed as a sex worker, it feels more obvious that he doesn't feel the same for her, and that he isn't worth the effort to stay married to just to prove his family wrong. It's a hard lesson for her to learn, even as a streetwise Brooklyn woman used to hustling men as a stripper, but Vanya tapped into her romantic side with all the sex and playground antics, and she proves to be more of an adult than he is.

    As I had seen Madison on the FX show Better Things as a teenager playing the eldest of Pamela Adlon's screen daughters, it did feel a little strange for me to see her in a film where she is topless in several scenes and playing a sex worker, but as she is 25 now, I got past it. The film even has a little in-joke about her age, where 21-year old Vanya asks her age, and she says 23, and he says she looks 25. Madison carries the film with a lot of fiery energy, affecting a strong Brooklyn accent, and portrays Ani as both rough around the edges as a young woman and smart beyond her years. She made me think of Cardi B, with her charismatic personality as a stripper and deep outer borough accent.

    With Sean Baker's films, it's a tricky balance between whether he wants to show marginalized characters with a respectful eye, but also coming in as a white, straight, cis-gendered man as an outsider, and possibly showing a stereotypical view. When I watched Tangerine, I could only watch half of it, and didn't know if the world of Black trans sex workers was being portrayed fairly through a white male director's eye. 2004's Take Out did have more of a documentary feel to it, as well as being an early film on a very low-budget, but as that also portrays the world of Chinese migrant delivery workers, I can't say whether Baker's film portrays them accurately. The Florida Project is one of his best films, with Willem Dafoe as the only well-known actor (aside from Caleb Landry Jones in a minor role), portraying children in low-income single mother families living in a motel just outside of Disney World in Orlando, FL, where the kids are messy and weird and annoying, but making the best of their living conditions in an unstable environment, and Dafoe as the motel manager looking out for them.

    Anora won the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, and has gotten a lot of acclaim, especially for Madison's performance. I did enjoy the movie as a weird and messy ride, though I wouldn't think of it as one of my current favorites of the year, just as a good comedy with sad, downbeat moments placed throughout the film.

    

Thoughts on The Entity

   On Criterion I watched The Entity, a 1982 horror film directed by Sidney J. Furie (Lady Sings the Blues, Iron Eagle, Ladybugs), and written by Frank De Felitta, adapted from his novel based on Doris Bither, a woman in the 1970s who claimed to have been raped by a phantasm, and went under observation by UCLA doctoral students.

    Barbara Hershey starred as Carla, a fictionalized version of Bither, who is a divorced mother of three, and she is violently raped in her home by an invisible assailant, but cannot prove the attacks because the attacker wasn't seen by anybody. She is repeatedly attacked, in brutal and graphic ways, and once in front of her children, where her grown son tries to save her, but is thrown back by an unseen force and breaks his wrist. When the attacks happen, the room shakes, mirrors break, doors slam, and it's obvious that she is being haunted. The film came out the same year as Poltergeist, but whereas that film is more about a suburban family being haunted because their home was built on indigenous burial ground, this is more of a psychological horror film about women and trauma and institutional sexism.

    The attacks are really rough and difficult to watch, and aren't depicted as horror movie exploitation, but really focusing on Carla's trauma and effect on her mental psyche. Hershey is really incredible in this film, in likely one of the best performances of her career, in playing a woman who is trying to be taken seriously by reporting her assaults, but is brushed off and treated in a condescending manner by medical professionals. Her scenes feel much more terrifying and more realistic than most horror movies could show, because her pain as an assault survivor feels much closer to real-life experiences of many women.

    When she sees a psychologist (Ron Silver), he keeps letting his professional skepticism get in the way of believing her, despite that she has bruises on her body that she wouldn't be able to inflict herself, and keeps insinuating that her past trauma of childhood abuse is allowing her mind to manifest these attacks, not wanting to believe in the paranormal or anything outside of scientific reasoning.

    Carla reaches out to paranormal scientists to help her, much like how the family in Poltergeist do to exorcise their house, and the psychologist sees them as quacks and feels like they are derailing his work with Carla, and she is torn between the scientists who see her as a lab rat to experiment on, including putting her in a simulation of her house in a gymnasium to summon the ghost, and the psychologist who talks down to her and thinks she needs to be committed to a psychiatric institution. It places Carla as even more of a heroine, amongst a world of mostly men in the sciences who keep pulling her in different directions based on what they want out of her to feel like heroes.

    It's a really fantastic film, but I wouldn't recommend it for anyone who is a survivor of sexual assault, as the scenes of her being attacked are quite disturbing and graphic.

Thoughts on The Company of Wolves

 

    On Criterion, I watched The Company of Wolves, Neil Jordan's 1984 film adapted from Angela Carter's feminist retelling of fairy tales, often twisting the stories to either include more female agency or being about men as predators in the guise of wolves. I really liked it a lot, how slow and dreamlike it felt with the soft-focus and slow-motion, and how the movie would have stories within a dream, occasionally having reality bleeding into the dream, and it being very misty and atmospheric and moody.

    The story initially takes place in the present day, where Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson) is a young girl who has a moody relationship with her sister, then she dreams that her family lives in a woodsy village centuries ago, and that her sister is killed by wolves. Rosaleen within the dream is sent to live with her grandmother (Angela Lansbury), who frequently cautions her about "never straying from the path," i.e. being a good girl who never is tempted by desire or doing anything wrong, and never trusting any man whose eyebrows meet in the middle. In this eerie take on Little Red Riding Hood, Rosaleen often disobeys her grandmother by wandering in the woods alone, and is drawn to a strange older man with a unibrow, who may be the wolf her grandmother is warning her about.

    The film interweaves stories of both Rosaleen's dream and stories told to her by her grandmother, often stories about women tempted by wolves and being led astray, or Rosaleen tells stories about others tempted by the Devil or shunned women having their revenge. The stories all mix together, so sometimes it's hard to tell which is in Rosaleen's dream world and which is in the story within a story, but it's all wonderful to watch as Gothic horror.

    I thought this movie was haunting and beautiful, with excellent special effects with the werewolf transformations, where the wolves shed their human skins with puppet wolf head coming out of the mouths of their human heads, it's graphic and glorious to watch. The film is full of obvious metaphors about Rosaleen becoming a woman, like blood dripping onto a white rose and turning it red, or her childhood toys falling to the ground in the finale as a lost of innocence. 

    I had read some of Angela Carter's writings as a teenager, and really liked her a lot, finding her fascinating as a mix of an academic and a fantasy nerd. She sadly died from cancer in 1992 when she was in her fifties, but I'm glad she was around to co-write the adapted screenplay to have her voice in this film, one of Neil Jordan's early directorial efforts. Other notable actors in this film besides Lansbury include David Warner as Rosaleen's father, Stephen Rea as a werewolf, and Terence Stamp in a cameo as the Devil. The film fits in well as a Halloween watch with its autumnal setting, and I highly recommend it.

Thoughts on The Wild Robot

I liked The Wild Robot (2024). It felt like a mix of The Iron Giant and Wall-E, and it had a different look than more louder DreamWorks movies, though it’s still directed at kids.

I liked that it has a good voice cast where it’s celebrities but nobody easily recognizable besides Matt Berry as a beaver, and the animation was really beautiful, and I liked how it captured the fox’s movements, like how it curled its tail around its body, or let out a slight whine when yawning like how dogs too. (I know that foxes are canines but not dogs, but it was very dog-like)

It’s directed by Chris Sanders, who made Lilo & Stitch, so I felt confident that it would have that same kind of heart mixed in with sci-fi, with the story being about a cyborg helper robot named Roz (Lupita Nyong’o) whose packaging lands on an island after a shipwreck, and she immediately wants to complete tasks for people, and as the island is only inhabited by animals, Roz is just bugging and freaking out all the animals with its requests to help them, being attacked by them instead. Roz learns to communicate with the animals and inadvertently becomes a “mother” to an orphaned gosling, befriending a smartass fox (Pedro Pascal) and slowly bonds with the other animals as she gains more intelligence beyond her initial programming.

It was a really nice movie to watch, and while it could have also worked as a dialogue-free short film about a robot bonding with animals in the wilderness, this was good, too.

Thoughts on My Old Ass

    In New York City, I went to go see My Old Ass, a 2024 film written and directed by Megan Park (The Fallout), co-produced by Margot Robbie, and starring Maisy Stella and Aubrey Plaza as the 18-year old and 39-year old versions of the same character, Elliott, communicating across time periods.

    18-year old Elliott (Stella) is spending her summer at her family's cranberry farm before she heads off to college at the University of Toronto. She is gay, hooks up with a local girl, and hangs out with her friends, operating a motorboat across the lake. Rather than spend her birthday with her family, she goes camping with her friends, and they take 'shrooms. While one friend is dancing about and other passes out, Elliott is joined by her 39-year old self (Plaza), seemingly conjured up as a hallucination. Stella and Plaza play really well off each other, with Stella as the bright-eyed Gen Z kid in disbelief and Plaza as the elder millennial who has lived life enough to be much wiser. They bond with each other, and when the younger Elliott wants some life-changing advice, aside from being told to value her family more, the older Elliott tells her to stay away from a guy named Chad. 

    She disappears with the end of the drug trip, and the next day, while out skinny-dipping in the lake, the younger Elliott happens to meet a teenage boy who is working a summer job on the farm, and his name is Chad. Elliott quickly swims away, then finds in her cell phone that older Elliott left her phone number under the contact 'My Old Ass." Then, they are able to call and text across time periods, and the movie doesn't bother to explain how this happens outside of the drug trip, to just go with it. Older Elliott is trying not to give her younger self too much information about the future, not wanting to create any weird butterfly effects or time shifts, but despite trying to heed her advice, younger Elliott keeps running into Chad, getting to know him, and being attracted to him despite her better judgement. 

    The movie gets really interesting when it mixes both a coming-of-age story about a young queer girl being confused about being attracted to a boy, as well as wanting to both leave the farm life behind and still hold onto her familial warmth and childhood, a confusing mix of growing up and being 18. And without giving too much away, I related a lot to the older Elliott, being her age, and the mix of wanting to give advice to her younger self, to protect her from pain, while understanding that she needs to take risks and embrace the unknown in order to grow and mature more.

    Despite the silly title, it's a really good movie, anchored by the performances of Stella and Plaza. It has some really touching moments between Elliott and her family, particularly a scene with her and her mother (Maria Dizzia) that is also about change and letting go, and I did nearly tear up at times towards the end. Stella has this chill, yet open expression to her that allows her to take in insights from others, and Plaza's deadpan delivery gives blunt truths about how her life may not go along her expectations, without being cruel about it. They play off of each other really well, and it makes the film very enjoyable to watch.

Thoughts on His Three Daughters

  

   On Netflix, there is a 2023 movie written and directed by Azazel Jacobs, called His Three Daughters, starring Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen, and Natasha Lyonne as three estranged sisters who come together because their father, Vincent, is in hospice, soon to die any day, and they gather at his rent-controlled apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where Rachel (Lyonne) has been living with their father, and the sisters aren't close, are wildly different from each other, and come at their anticipatory grief with varying ways of coping with it. They try to keep a polite front when the hospice staff members visit, but otherwise fight with each other, with a lot of high tension in the air.

    Katie (Coon) quickly takes charge, ordering around Rachel and seeing her as a freeloading pot-smoking gambler who is only using their father to be on the lease for his cheap apartment. She is passive-aggressive, snarking at the hospice staff member being named Angel because of his work, and starts off the movie setting down ground rules for everyone to get along, before quickly treating Rachel like she is an insolent teenager in her own home. Katie has her stresses at home with her husband and children, having one-sided phone conversations, and is clearly trying to find some control in her life, but going way too far with it. She is also trying to get a DNR (do not resuscitate) order signed by her father with his sound mind, and is frustrated with Rachel with not having it done earlier.

    Rachel shrinks in Katie's presence, is just trying to bear her presence to keep the peace, and often tries to stay out of her way, watching games in her room and doing bets, and smoking pot out on the bench in the co-op courtyard, often chatting with the security guard who comes around to say hi and gently remind her not to smoke on the premises. She has been taking care of her father all of this time, cutting up his apples because it's all he can eat at that point, and handling things, but because she isn't his biological daughter, as her father died when she was four, her half-sisters don't see him as her "real" father, and distance themselves from her, which adds to the family divide.

    Christina (Olsen) is more of a hippie space cadet type, who is the youngest, is the mother of a young child named Mirabella (and is amazed when one of the hospice staff workers has the same name), and tries to keep the peace between Katie and Rachel, not wanting them to argue and cause more stress. She tries to decompress by doing yoga in the living room, zoning out to take a break, and talks about how she found her community as a Deadhead when she was younger.

    This is a really great movie, featuring three outstanding actresses, acting more like they are in a play than a film, and I deeply connected to this film, with the sister stresses and arguments, especially with the strained relationship between Katie and Rachel. Without getting too personal, there were scenes between them that hit very close to home, especially when the camera focuses on Rachel sitting at a lower level, being chewed out by Katie, with Katie's face out of frame, that felt very real in feeling smaller in someone else's presence.

    I saw this film at the Angelika Film Center in Manhattan, and it's currently streaming on Netflix, and I highly recommend it.